What Would Thimbleberry Do?

Holding a Council of All Beings in the Classroom

Way back in January, I had all my students pull the name of a local plant or animal out of a hat. (You may remember the noble kid who got Questionable Rock Frog lichen.) Since then, we’ve been working with our species in many ways. We wrote field guide pages and poems about them, monologues from their point of view, and entire plays where they are the characters (more on that another day). We made masks of them. And we let them speak in a Council of All Beings.

A Council of All Beings is a practice that goes back to Deep Ecology, and has been used in many situations. I remember doing one in my very wonderful elementary school in 1990. The premise is that, instead of humans making unilateral decisions that affect the whole planet, people could get counsel from other species. So, a group of humans representing other affected species, hold a council to talk through the decision.

In the classroom, I’ve only used this process in mock decisions, but it still is a powerful experience for everyone. This year we had all the kids, with their masks, come to the council as the species they’ve been immersed in. I came as an affordable housing developer, and in the class where she helps, my assistant teacher Lena came as a farmer (which she is, when she’s not a teacher).

I presented my problem to the council: we desperately need more affordable housing in King County. I presented my solution: to clear a few acres of land to build houses for 100 households. My plan called for neat rows of houses complete with driveways and garages, little back lawns, and patios. I planned on uniform street trees — Bradford pears anyone? — and a mix of single-family homes and duplex and triplexes. In one class, I added a few luxury homes to the plan.

Here are the woods and the development Becca the Developer was planning to build in them.

Then I opened up the floor. First, there were questions. Then lots of opinions and concerns. Was I going to leave any of the trees? Sitka Spruce wanted to know. What was happening to the creek? asked Pacific Giant Salamander, who didn’t think he could live in a culvert.

Here is another version of the plan, which probably deserves to be upside down.

Becca the Developer started to draw a new plan, this one with a daylighted creek. Salmon said she needed shade trees along the creek. Sitka Spruce and Thimbleberry offered to grow there. Devil’s Club thought he would like the wet slope above the creek. It became clear that none of the animals or plants really liked a good backyard lawn, except for Dandelion. They wanted flowers to pollinate. They wanted shrubs and water. They thought the humans should live in apartment buildings with underground parking and rooftop gardens. The cars, said Salmon, should stay away from the creek, because some of them leak. But what about people who want to have barbecues, or play, or garden? Rooftop barbecues, playgrounds, and a community garden were added to the plan. What about poor endangered Checkerspot Butterfly, who needed prairie? Look, down near the community garden, space for a small prairie. Space for woods too, with a pond in them for Frog. What about people who didn’t want to live in apartments? How about houses with native shrubs and flowers instead of lawns?

The revised development from the Seattle class, named Green Ground Forest Family Neighborhood

The students, speaking as the animals and plants, thought about storm runoff, water quality, habitats, pesticides, riparian zones, biodiversity: not in so many words, but in an alive and integrated way. They also still had tremendous empathy for humans, planning playgrounds and bus stops and even a plan for where dogs could play without hurting wildlife. Their plan housed just as many humans, and every species present except cougar and wolverine. If there were some landscaping boulders, Questionable Rock Frog thought he could get going, given some time.

The Wednesday Carnation class’s plan even includes dead trees, for Woodpecker.

After that, the Wednesday class turned Lena’s four-crop 1,000 acre farm into a diverse organic farm in a matter of minutes, demanding hedgerows and a clean river.

This project has not-so-subtle ecological lessons in it, and social ones too. It also is a practice in empathy, problem-solving, conflict resolution and imagination. The classes also LOVED it. I told them I’d send their ideas to the county housing folks (because who doesn’t like hearing from kids?), and they beamed. After spending months imaginatively embodying their creatures, they were eloquent and enthusiastic spokespeople for them

In the future, I’d like to work on the process a little bit, ideally having a facilitator who wasn’t playing a human. I think it would also be cool to try it with a real decision our class was facing, though I don’t know what that would be.